It’s an end of year tradition for many media, blogs and individuals, to predict what will happen in the next year. Whilst it’s clear that the economy is going to dominate the news for at least most of 2009, if not the whole year, there will be plenty of other newsworthy items that will hopefully take the edge off the doom and gloom.

After conversations with our R&D team we have listed seven technologies that we think are sure to have a big impact in the e-learning sector in 2009. We hope this list will get you thinking about topics you may have thought about before, but in new ways. The path to innovation! We have attempted to order this list from most obvious to least obvious, you can jump down the list if some topics aren’t of interest. So lets have some fun. Post any comments or disagreements below in the comments or on your own blog.

• 07. Online Video
• 06. Twitter
• 05. Browser War
• 04. Mobile Technology
• 03. Netbooks
• 02. Learning Nuggets
• 01. Semantic Search Technologies

07. Online Video

2008 was the year that online video went big. The year saw a dramatic evolution in online video, making good on a year old promise and taking it to the masses, 2009 will bring even more success to this industry. More people are watching online video and spending more time doing it. Online video finally has widespread acceptance as a delivery platform. With faster broadband and cheaper, better quality equipment the barrier to entry has been dramatically reduced, if not wiped out.

It has become abundantly clear that viewing habits are changing. What “generation y’ers” call TV today is not what their parents called TV just 10 years ago. TV watching now also refers to watching content on a PC or phone. In the recent U.S. presidential election we were witness to the popularity, utility and effectiveness of such clips – from the vice presidential and presidential debates and interviews with the candidates to the parodies.

The quality of video is also improving, YouTube has gone high definition, widescreen, and is now offering annotated video. Other providers are following and fast. Flash Player, the leader in online video has much improved video features, adopting the H.264 format which is fast becoming the delivery method of choice.

It’s not just pre-recorded video that is going to be big. Live streaming video will become huge in 2009, with the entry of big players like Ustream.tv. Live video is great for events and training because it leaves users feeling empowered and provides immediate feedback. Qik is one such service that I use frequently, QIK allows users to stream video to the Web from a mobile handset. Live video may not be as prevalent on the consumer radar as YouTube, but it’s safe to say it will be in 2009.

06. Twitter

Evan William creates software that allows people to broadcast their thoughts. He developed Blogger, the easy to use blogging tool that Google later snapped up. In early 2006 he launched a Micro Blog service called Twitter. Twitter lets people broadcast short messages over the web, email, IM and phones to anyone in the world.

The idea has really caught on with the “always on” connected crowd, and while some people love the idea of a constant stream of updates, others are appalled.

Twitter is becoming a serious platform for discourse and discussion. More than a status app, it is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news. It is the coverage of news events and the continued emergence of citizen journalism that will push Twitter toward the mainstream this year.

Twitter is not the only Micro Blog service out there. For instance Identi.ca allows you to create your own service with only a small amount of technical knowledge. With more ubiquitous broadband availability this type of service will replace SMS as the means of sharing thoughts, locations and opinions with friends.

BTW each line in this message is < 140 characters.

05. Browser War

We are currently in the middle of the second browser war. Since Microsoft’s Internet Explorer won the first war against Netscape Navigator many browsers have challenged the incumbent. Firefox, Opera and Safari are the three that have continued to gain an increasing share of the browser market.

Numbers have always been disputed but in the past few months we have seen Microsoft release beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla update Firefox to version 3 and Google arrive with its own browser for “a new age of rich internet applications” Chrome. Google even took an unconventional approach of describing how Chrome works in an online comic strip, available here.

Now in an unprecedented move only 100 days and fifteen updates later, Google has taken the “beta” label off Chrome. Given that the company has traditionally become known for keeping products like Gmail or Google Docs in perpetual beta, it is really putting pressure on it’s competitors to innovate or lose market share.

The exciting thing about all of this for 2009 is that all the main browsers now contain tools for sharing and consuming linked data online. Take for instance the Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 which let you complete browsing activities like getting directions, translating words, emailing your friends, checking Facebook and more in just a few mouse clicks.

It’s not clear which browser will win the war, but we will soon be at a browser agnostic crossroads, where any content will run in any browser – at least on the desktop for now.

It is hard to see the IE monopoly crumble overnight, most users don’t know or even care that a better option exists. And why should they switch? Many of the problems you may have heard people complain about with IE 6 have now been resolved in newer versions. Currently I enjoy using Flock which is a Firefox variant that has great social features to keep in touch with colleagues and friends.

04. Mobile Technology

The mobile phone is the most widely used electronic device on the planet, with about a third of the world’s population having at least one. This compares with one in six people having access to a PC. The opportunities are huge given the relative youth of the industry.

Growth in 2009 will be especially strong in Asia, Africa and other less developed parts of the world where wireless mobile solutions are often more economic to implement, due to topography and infrastructure restrictions. In China for example, 2007 figures show an average of 5.2 million new subscribers each month. This represents a massive opportunity for content providers.

Life has also gotten a lot more social on the web. Web 2.0 is not only changing what’s available, but also how it works. A tremendous shift has occurred. What was formally considered private and personal is now considered open and public. Journals, diaries and photo albums have given way to text and video blogs. Tools to create music, videos and other multimedia objects are readily available, resulting in greater sharing of media.

There is now a larger number of different mobile devices available to learners and enterprise. Convergence is the key word. Many phones now offer music playback and music players are offering connections to online stores like iTunes for music and video purchase. High end smart phones like Blackberry offer very similar features to desktop or laptop screens for web browsing and email.

The downside of this convergence can often be increased confusion where as the upside is an even larger range of devices that have m-Learning opportunities. In 2007 we saw a very impressive entrance to the market by the iPhone. In 2008 Google unveiled Android a new operating system for mobile devices. The first Android device the G1 arrived in 2008 . In the Enterprise market the new Blackberry has gone down a storm.

I agree with others that m-learning will only be relevant for small learning nuggets or special cases in the short term, but there are some questions we need to ask ourselves in 2009 to get further toward a fuller m-Learning solution, these include:

• What’s the addressable market supporting the technology and on which devices?
• What tools do we need to develop content?
• Can we leverage our current skills or do we need to learn new ones?
• How do we distribute content?
• Is the content inside/outside the mobile browser?

03.Netbooks

When was the last time you loaded a CD into your laptop? In the past few years it has become increasingly uncommon for laptops to be sold with a CD drive.

When Asus unveiled the ASUS Eee PC in 2007 it immediately sold out. The term netbook was coined. A netbook is a very small, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient notebook, primarily used for Internet based services such as web browsing, web video, e-mailing and instant messaging. Basically anything that would be required to take an e-learning course. They are also suitable for light use running office and educational software.

As these machines are cheaper than a traditional laptop, I think we will start to see these being used as training PC’s that can be moved or brought home by learners.

02. Learning Nuggets

A learning nugget is a small piece of content that can be created on the fly, often using rapid development tools, in response to an immediate training need. They are small modules of learning information for people who need to learn more but don’t have much time available. You can learn at your own pace quickly.

One question raised this year is, do rapid e-learning tools remove the need for the professional development team? This makes me think about the amateur Vs professional photography debate. In this industry the cost of equipment has come down making it available to everyone. This has not removed the need for professional photographers that can provide higher quality results at a higher cost. The same principal applies to rapid e-learning.

Rapid e-learning is here, companies need to be able to provide it as a service or identify why a custom built solution is more appropriate. There is a split in the e-learning industry with some still saying rapid e-learning is faster. This is largely untrue it just democratizes production but not without some cost to production standards.

The use of learning nuggets implies that professional teams create the original content whilst the client, subject matter experts (SME) or learning professional can later add to on the fly using rapid development tools and methodologies.

Performance support is one area that comes to mind as being particularly suitable for learning nuggets. Learner sales training, IT and compliance training courses would also provide us with suitable procedural material. Updates to these courses can be done on the fly with learning nuggets and could also be done via RSS and Podcasts.

Is this not SCORM? The idea behind SCORM is to produce course content that is reusable in this way. We take resources from several courses, and let the server put them together at delivery time. Currently however this creates courses that look like random clippings from a magazine.

Also what good is content that can’t be categorised? A growing number of user generated content sites are using tagging systems, also known as folksonomies. Flickr and the social-bookmarking site Delicious, are generally considered folksonomy pioneers. A folksonomy has people tagging information so that they can come back to it themselves or so that others with the same vocabulary can find it. This type of model could be used to tag the learning nuggets, but only if a sufficient number of contributors are adding to the long tail.

Viral content that use pre-existing social networks to introduce fun elements into a course or to achieve other objectives such as learner engagement are coming, we will see the first examples of this in 2009.

01. Semantic Search Technologies

The semantic web is an extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be read and understood by computers, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. It may all sound a bit like a science fiction film, but it’s on the way.

Semantics are going to be the next big thing in search engine technology. Google has come to dominate the search market, however Google seems to believe that the only reason people go online is to buy something. They have made billions from advertising revenue and are now in a monopoly position. People merely looking for information use Google because they don’t have any other choice.

A human will know that mouse and keyboards are common computer peripherals, and can be categorized as such. Computers can’t make this connection on their own. Google does this via a person performing search engine optimization (SEO) on their site. SEO centers around the idea that as a business or individual, it’s important to understand the sector you’re operating in.

We can’t expect Google to run our business but what is particularly bad about SEO is that honest brokers trying to present information without all the SEO trickery needed are never found. The site you are pointed to should be the best site, not a second rate popular site. This is the biggest flaw with SEO.

The situation is apparent anytime you look for a comparison of two services or products on Google. What you find is a bunch of sales site. The semantic web will provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given domain of knowledge . The semantic web however, will not destroy Google. Google makes some great products and if any start up company does produce a compelling semantic search capability, Google will more than likely buy them. Google does perform better than it’s competitors Yahoo or MSN, but there is always room for improvement.

What does this have to do with e-learning? As our e-learning libraries start to grow to include assets in many formats and from many different locations, we need to be able to search these effectively, using traditional searches won’t fly, semantics are the best answer. In 2009 we will hear a lot of hype about semantics but the killer application or product has yet to be found. If you would like to investigate this area more take a look over Read Write Web a fantastic Web 2.0 site.

So that’s it… all 7!

Here are a few others that didn’t quite make the list:

• 2009 will be the year that 3D takes the web by storm
• 2009 will see a major push of Mobile Presence applications using the web, GPS and 3G technologies.
• 2009 will see mobile reading devices get a lot cheaper and more popular
• 2009 will see the web become even more social, everything will move toward collaboration
• 2009 will see Apple loose market share to the more open G-Phone from Google

Let us know if you have any to add to our list.